Social Sciences

Have we developed the collective wisdom and conscience to deal with a world in which ubiquitous technological interactions are so intertwined that they cannot be untangled? Let's hope so, because that's what our future holds. "Digital Frontier: Buffalo Summit 2001," a major international conference to be held Nov. 2 and 3 at the University at Buffalo, will present observations and research on what digital technology has wrought by some of the most brilliant, pioneering thinkers in art, social science, applied science and engineering, medicine, philosophy and education.

With the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon now one month ago, this is the time when cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in those who witnessed the events in person or through the news media will start being diagnosed, according to a psychologist at the University at Buffalo.

Women with a history of problem drinking exhibited significant increases in abstinence and light-drinking days, and decreases in heavy drinking, after participating in a 10-week program at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.

The image of an airplane flying into the second tower of the World Trade Center and exploding in flames, played over and over on television following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will remain in America's collective consciousness for a long time. For all, that image forever will represent a national tragedy. But for some, there will be a more profound personal effect, according to a University at Buffalo expert in psychological trauma.

The World Trade Center twin towers should be rebuilt as a "focal sign for American resolve, for the ability of a democratic society to suffer injury and heal," according to an urban sociologist at the University at Buffalo.

A major emphasis on improving intelligence-gathering -- including having the FBI and CIA work in tandem -- must be a key piece of the U.S. retaliation against terrorists for last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to a University at Buffalo professor who is a former editor of the journal Armed Forces & Society. "If President Bush looks only to the military, which seems to be both his initial inclination, and what the American public wants him to do, he will get incomplete and misleading information about what's important," said Claude E. Welch, Jr., Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the UB Department of Political Science.

Deborah Waldrop, Ph.D., University at Buffalo assistant professor of social work, was social work director at Oklahoma City's St. Anthony Hospital on April 19, 1995, when a truck bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Located roughly five blocks from the disaster, St. Anthony was on the front line of rescue efforts and Waldrop learned first-hand the devastating impact such a tragedy has on rescue workers responding to disasters.

Americans' "general naivete" regarding the beliefs and assumptions of religions other than their own is hampering their ability to understand discussions about those suspected of being responsible for last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to Phillips Stevens, Jr. Stevens, associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo and nationally-recognized expert in the anthropology of religion, says the lack of knowledge is particularly acute when it comes to fundamentalist religious groups of the Middle East.

George W. Bush took a solid first step in improving his image as this country's leader when he stepped to the microphone this week to comment on terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to a University at Buffalo professor with expertise in leadership, charisma and management styles.

The terrorists who Tuesday used hijacked commercial airliners to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon "were using death and destruction to deliver a message," according to an associate professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo. "They deliberately chose to attack the most visible symbols of American wealth and military power," says James M. Lawler, whose expertise is in social and political philosophy, "hoping that the impoverished majority of mankind would applaud and rally behind them."